Page 3 of Tracked
We were retrievalists—a term Creighton hated because it wasn’t a real word, but since Creighton hated most things except for tea and tattoos, we kept it in spite of his protests.
As retrievalists, we found what was missing for those who offered a reward and, in special circumstances, for those who didn’t offer one. Our cases were usually missing persons. Sometimes missing valuables: Jewelry. Paintings. A relative’s missing will. Rarely missing pets, but never fugitive criminals. An important distinction between what we did and bounty hunting, albeit one people generally struggled to understand.
“I know you just got back from California, so if you want me to take it, I can—or if you want to go. It doesn’t matter.”
Where Colby was the Dynamo, Creed was the Drifter, always needing to be on the move. I usually gave him preference when a new reward came through, especially one that was across the country.
The distinct rumble of an approaching quad paused our conversation. Within seconds, a four-wheeler appeared from the path to the house with Cassius at its helm.
Cassius Stone was a hard man. A wild man. All muscle and grit. Exactly the kind of man one would expect to find living off-grid on a thousand acres of wilderness. Once upon a time, he’d been a secret service agent at the very heart of technology and world events. It was because he knew that world that he’d moved here, not just to escape it but to also hide himself and his family from it.
Cassius stopped beside us but left the engine running as he said, “Calder, I need you to come back to the house. There’s someone here to see you.” His voice had the quality of worn leather, abraded from prolonged wear and tear but still supple from its lasting strength.
If it weren’t for the gray hair and beard, one would be hard-pressed to believe the fifty-eight-year-old was a father of six rather than the eldest of seven. And a single father, no less, for the last eighteen years.
“At the house?” Whoever this visitor was wasn’t my first concern.
Few people ventured onto Stonewall Ranch, and even fewer did so without an invitation. The ranch wasfamily only. Though it wasn’t one of Cassius’s written rules, it was an unspoken one.
I could count on one hand the number of people who’d been invited to our home. Uninvited guests, on the other hand, were usually hunters or hikers who’d missed the postedprivate propertyandno trespassingsigns; they were welcomed by Cassius’s stiff warning and the even stiffer shotgun strapped to his back as he patrolled the perimeter.
“Yes.” Cassius jerked his chin, the salt-and-pepper gray of his beard framing the harsh slash of his mouth as he ordered, “Get on.”
I shot Creed an apologetic glance. “If you want to wait—”
“No, I’ll go,” he said without a single inflection of emotion. But that was Creed. He just did. Went. Lived off the back of his massive Harley like staying in one place too long—even here—put him in peril.
I climbed behind Cassius, who hit the gas before I was fully seated.
“Who is it?” I called over the howling wind at my ears.
Cassius didn’t answer me, and it was on purpose. Whoever was here, it was my fault they’d invaded our sanctuary. Just like it was my fault my mother had been killed.
The house appeared ahead to the squawking of a fleeing, furious duck.
Donnie flapped out of the open attic window belonging to Creighton’s room, landed in the grass behind the house, and waddled his way toward the blow-up pool Colby had fashioned into Donnie’s own personal pond. I was fairly certain there was a small bag of tea leaves clutched in his beak.
Well, that answered that.
The home I’d grown up in was large by any account. With six children, Cassius Stone had spared no expense in building the appreciable stone-faced, large-windowed, two-storied compound to comfortably house our wild brood. The footprint then expanded to accommodate Cassius’s expansive library, from which we were all required to read, and Mom’s spacious kitchen and attached greenhouse, which Cassius now religiously maintained.
Cassius rounded the front of the house, and my attention went to the unfamiliar dark-red sedan parked next to Creed’s modified F-250. It had Wyoming plates. Numerous dents on the bumper. And as we pulled up next to it, I saw a barcode sticker in the front window.A rental.
Was it someone from a recent case? I’d been to Colorado, Nevada, and Texas in the last three months, but no contacts from there seemed likely. We never gave out the ranch address. Ever.A rule.Maybe someone local who’d moved away? Someone who’d worked with Mom?
I climbed off the four-wheeler, running through the possibilities the same way I’d scanned Free Fall’s rock face for my next hold.What were my options? What made the most sense? What had the highest probability of being correct?
I entered through the front door to Creighton’s taut warning aimed at our sister down the hall: “This brings a whole new meaning tofowlplay, Colby. That duck better watch out.”
Colby called back, “It’s not Donnie’s fault your room is a disaster and you keep losing your tea!”
It was, 100 percent, Donnie’s fault. However, it was equally true that Creighton’s domain was a complete disaster. It was the kind of thing people wrote off for a genius who must have a method to his mess and madness.
Driving a tattooed hand with ink-stained fingers through his shoulder-length hair, Creighton glowered at her and then at me, and then thundered back to his attic.
“Library,” Cassius said, and turned, heading to the kitchen. It was almost lunchtime, which meant he’d be making cold-cut sandwiches for whoever was home before taking his afternoon patrol through the property.
I walked in the opposite direction through the living room, past Colby’s photographs on the walls, the aged leather couches worn from six wild children, and the stone hearth that yawned for winter’s daily log fires, all the way to the pocket doors that sequestered the cerebral domain of the library at the end of the house.
